


but for a moment (we were still)

by coalitiongirl



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 16:25:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15538257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: This is how they fight for each other: in knowing when to stop. In knowing that they’ve never crossed this line for a reason. Emma kisses her again, one last time, and they hold each other in silence, in the fragile circle of a friendship and family that can never suffer the fate of all that has come before.Arms around Emma, head against her shoulder, blonde hair tickling at her lips, the palest shadow of a signature in permanent marker on her arm: this is how they begin and end.Daniel returns only six weeks later.





	but for a moment (we were still)

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in some indeterminate future after S6, I guess, minus all the annoying stuff. I wrote it for Supernova, originally, but came to the conclusion that it wasn't really the kind of thing that would appeal. So I've been sitting on it for a while! I hope you give it a chance. <3

_ I found my real mom!  _ and her world falls apart, just like that.

 

Not in the way that she thinks it must at first. At first, she thinks about  _ Henry _ and a hole in her heart, long ago filled, now torn gaping open again. At first, she thinks about curses and saviors and the life she’d built with sweat and blood toppling out from beneath her. At first, a woman says  _ hi  _ and Regina only thinks of how to ruin her.

 

But her world falls apart with a shout from her son and an awkward smile from Emma Swan, and she can pinpoint that moment with precision in the years to come.

 

She is ruined. Emma Swan is sitting on her kitchen counter, doodling on Regina’s arm with a Sharpie while Regina pretends to stare at the cookbook beside Emma instead. No, Emma isn’t doodling– she’s signed her name with a flourish, a scribble across Regina’s skin.  _ Property of Emma Swan. This masterpiece was created by Emma Swan. _

 

“Okay, now look,” Emma says smugly, and she waves her hand. The scribble fades into Regina’s skin with a little burst of magic, embedded within her for good. “How’d I do?” 

 

Regina tilts her face upward and Emma hesitates, still uncertain about what they might become, still tentative in her movements. Regina touches Emma’s cheek, brings her closer, and presses her lips to Emma’s.  _ Ruined by Emma Swan.  _ A first kiss, and Regina can’t recall the time before it, can’t recall who she was when she wasn’t kissing Emma. It is quiet, peaceful as they’ve never been and always wanted to be, and Emma’s eyes are closed when Regina finally drifts back, her gaze on Emma’s face.

 

Emma says, “Wow,” and laughs softly, blinking back a suspicious wetness in her eyes. Regina’s hand is still on Emma’s cheek, and she catches a tear on her thumb and waits. 

 

Emma slides off the counter, drawing Regina to her, and they kiss again, giggling breathlessly as though they’ve transgressed. As though this had been the final, forbidden path, and they’ve been hovering in front it for years, waiting to cross its threshold. Regina has been careening toward ruin for half a decade, and here she is. 

 

The third kiss is quieter, more somber, and Regina cups Emma’s face in her own, watches her with solemn eyes and feels the glow of Emma’s warm smile on her heart like a second sun. “Is this…?” she begins, and then falters, taking a step back as reality rushes into focus. “Emma,” she whispers, and she can feel that hole in her heart again, the stopper cracking so air like ash can waft from it.

 

Emma slips her hand into Regina’s, the smile fading from her face. “Don’t,” she pleads in barely an exhale. “Don’t say it.” 

 

“I love you,” Regina murmurs, and she is made of thin glass, breakable with only a touch. “I love you  _ so  _ much, but I’ve never…” Emma must know by now that Regina is unmade by love, is destroyed by all but Henry. It’s the fate she’s wandered into, the trappings that she can never cast off. “I can’t lose you, Emma.” 

 

Emma, who has never known a love that hasn’t been about pain, about betrayal, about twisting everything she cares about into destruction– Emma sags. “I know,” she breathes. “I know.” 

 

This is how they fight for each other: in knowing when to stop. In knowing that they’ve never crossed this line for a reason. Emma kisses her again, one last time, and they hold each other in silence, in the fragile circle of a friendship and family that can never suffer the fate of all that has come before.

 

Arms around Emma, head against her shoulder, blonde hair tickling at her lips, the palest shadow of a signature in permanent marker on her arm: this is how they begin and end. 

 

Daniel returns only six weeks later.

 

* * *

 

It’s a surprise and it isn’t at once. There’s an open portal in her backyard, a gaping hole they haven’t managed to close yet, and it’s one-way. They’ve had some strange visitors in the past months, too many faces from Regina’s past for her to be comfortable with, and she’d put on a false smile and let Emma assure them that she isn’t evil anymore.

 

_ And we’re supposed to believe your lover?  _ one of her old guards had said skeptically, and they’d both frozen up until Snow had stepped forward. Regina had allowed her, had stood in vulnerability with her arms around herself as she never would have in the past, and she had felt the guard’s eyes slide over her, fear gone and respect with it.

 

And then it had only been Emma, who had caught her eye once the guard had left with Snow and slipped a hand to the small of Regina’s back. “He doesn’t know you,” she’d murmured.

 

“He knows me,” Regina had said simply, and Emma had put only a hint of pressure on Regina’s back before Regina had bent and broken, pressing her forehead to Emma’s shoulder and closing her eyes, letting Emma’s whispered reassurances chase away the darkness.

 

They haven’t talked about what had happened in the kitchen weeks before, and Regina knows that they won’t. Everything that could be said had been said, and they’re closer than ever now, more prone to tactile comfort and silent communication. Regina dreams of hot skin and trembling limbs and she wakes up with her lips tingling,  _ craving _ , but she sees Emma in the morning and she is content again.

 

Yearning is for those who’ve never been mocked with what they’d always wanted. She has spent decades learning acceptance, and she has everything to lose if she falters.

 

So they don’t speak about what had happened, and they still have family dinners and lunch together and walk through the streets of Storybrooke with Emma’s hand hovering someone over Regina’s arm. Her name is still etched on Regina’s skin in permanent marker, sealed in by the magic that had been meant to remove it, and Regina touches the writing sometimes and is grateful for what she has.

 

“I’ll figure it out one day,” Emma promises, her fingers tracing the signature anxiously. They’re curled up together on one of the couches in the living room after a movie, Regina’s eyes drifting closed and open again as she dozes off. “Give me time and I’ll get it off. I swear.“ 

 

“I’m sure you will,” Regina says agreeably. There are a dozen spells that might work, that she’s used many times before. “Henry has gotten it into his head that you’ll make him a magical tattoo, which is an entirely different issue–“ 

 

She stops. There’s a surge of energy outside the window, a telltale sign that the portal is acting up. She can see the lights flashing, casting long shadows through the room, and Emma lets out a whine of “ _ Now _ ?” She squirms in place, dislodging Regina’s head. “I was just getting comfortable.” 

 

Regina looks at her fondly, sitting up with the same reluctance. Emma’s fingers slide from the marker as she moves, and she hurries to stand first so she can help Regina up. She’s always quick to be… _ chivalrous _ , like knights had once been when Regina had been a girl to court and not a queen to fear, and Regina lets Emma open doors and pull out chairs and take her arm when they walk. There is always a glow of warmth that accompanies it, and Regina is content.

 

They walk companionably to the back door, Emma’s hand still loose in Regina’s as they peer outside. The portal is still swirling, and the silhouette of a man is visible in front of it, though she can’t make out any more than that. She can feel her chest tighten in anticipation of the worst, of the dread of another face from her past as they recognize her.

 

She is tired of being flinched away from; of being seen with eyes that fear and see nothing but who she was. There is no way to fight that but with a smile on her face and Emma assuring the newcomers that Regina is harmless as a kitten, and she hates every moment of it except for Emma standing beside her, casting anxious, comforting looks her way. 

 

“It’s going to be okay,” Emma murmurs, and she squeezes Regina’s hand as they step outside. Emma always seems to know what she’s hiding, what she doesn’t dare say. Emma will sit with her and wait, wait, until Regina can finally admit the secrets she locks up inside around everyone else. 

 

Regina takes a few more steps forward, into the night, approaching the portal as the energy around it begins to dissipate. Emma stays close beside her, wary eyes on the figure standing in the center of its light field. 

 

The portal’s energy surges one last time and then collapses into itself, a blip that fades from existence again and leaves a man behind, his back to them. Regina watches him, her brow furrowed as she struggles to– to see, to understand–

 

“Don’t be alarmed,” Emma says gently, and the man jerks in surprise with the force of a spooked horse, and he twists around in a rush of movement. Regina’s hand falls from Emma’s. Emma sees– sees only Regina’s lips parting, her eyes widening, and she comes to the wrong conclusion. “I know you…” Her voice strengthens and her eyes are hard, strong. “I know you’re afraid,” she says. “But it’s been a long time. This isn’t the Regina you knew.” 

 

The man speaks in a croak, a rough, unused voice. “I think she is,” he says, his eyes on Regina. Regina can’t tear her gaze away, can feel unshed tears glistening in her eyes, can feel her heart pounding and her breathing unsteady from it.

 

Emma sees her distress and her own eyes narrow. “Listen, buddy,” she says, and she shifts so she’s blocking Regina from him, ever protective, ever with good intentions. There have been some visitors who had barreled at Regina, one who’d wrapped his hands around her neck and nearly succeeded. “You go after Regina, I go after you. Let’s start with that. Welcome to Storybrooke, the mayor is off-limits, and I’ll kick your ass if you even  _ look  _ at her the wrong way, so–“  

 

The man cocks his head to watch her, nonplussed, and Emma’s voice falters. “So–“ she repeats, and Regina finally finds her voice.

 

“Daniel?” she whispers. Emma stops speaking immediately. Her skin is pale where it had been flushed with righteous anger before, and her hand rises to her mouth, hovering in front of it and never quite reaching it. Regina sees all this from her peripheral vision, from a distance, her eyes still fixed on a ghost.

 

Daniel’s eyes glow. “Regina,” he says, and his voice is as gentle and warm as she remembers it. Emma steps to the side mechanically, and Regina rushes forward as Daniel does, his arms around her and she can only laugh until it turns to weeping, until she’s clutching him with her heart still beating so hard she thinks it might burst right from her chest.

 

Daniel holds her in front of him for a moment, spinning around, and then embraces her again. “ _ Regina _ ,” he whispers, reverent as a prayer, and Regina catches sight of Emma, backed up to the door, her smile fragile and her eyes wet.

 

Regina mouths her name, her bruised heart overwhelmed with a dozen contrasting emotions, and Emma gives her another fragile smile and slips inside before Regina can even think to pull away from Daniel.

 

* * *

 

Inside, the house is still. Henry is asleep upstairs, oblivious to the turmoil downstairs, and Regina is making tea in the kitchen, her heart tapping a staccato beat against her chest. She flits in and out of the study, incapable of standing in there for too long. 

 

Emma is drinking wine while Daniel waits for the tea, his own hand pressed to his chest. “The last thing I remember is Cora’s hand in my chest,” he says, twisting around to catch Regina’s eye. She offers him a breakable smile, feeling long-shed tears reappear in her eyes. “Did I…?” He clears his throat. “I died, didn’t I?” 

 

“Yes,” Emma answers for Regina. “You did.” She sips at her wine, her face carefully shaped into something unrecognizable. Emma has never been very good at restraining herself, and Regina shudders at the restraint on her face now– at the idea of an Emma who looks alien in her self-control. “It’s been a long time since then.” 

 

“This place…everything seems so different,” Daniel says, peering around. His eyes linger on the lamp, on the laptop on the table, on Regina in the doorway. Regina inhales, exhales.

 

Emma says, “It’s a different realm. Everyone was cu– everyone wound up here.” Her fingers wind around the stem of her glass and unwind, the only sign of her discomfort. She hasn’t turned to look at Regina once. “It’s pretty nice. You’ll get used to it. Everyone who falls out of that portal does.” 

 

Daniel shifts to watch Emma instead. He has always been one to  _ watch _ , to take in more than he ever should have. Regina remembers it growing up, remembers the stable boy with his eyes on her and how it had annoyed her until it had made her blush instead. It makes Emma flush, too, as much from the wine as from his steady gaze. “And who are you?” he asks, his eyes flickering back to Regina.

 

“I’m Snow White’s daughter,” Emma says flatly. “Emma. I’m…” There is a familiar set to her jaw, the one that comes with stubbornness and self-sacrifice and everything in between. Regina aches with bones accustomed to aching. Emma smiles without any amusement. “I’m basically Regina’s step-granddaughter.” 

 

“Emma,” Regina says, her heart clenching. Emma doesn’t turn to her.

 

Daniel stares at them both, his eyes keen and sorrowful. “Then you did wed the king,” he says, his voice thick with the realization. “I…I had hoped you had never had to endure that.” He closes his eyes for a moment. They watch him, gripped with words that haven’t been said, and he says, “I am glad to hear that you had a friend like Snow White in the palace with you.” 

 

He is so innocent. He doesn’t know what had led to his death, to Regina’s marriage, to the death and destruction that had followed it. She has to tell him. He must know, even if it wipes the innocent affection from his eyes. The world has been cruel to her and she’s been cruel in return, but years of repentance haven’t been enough to spare her the hell that these revelations will be.

 

Emma says, “Yep,” her eyes hard and determined, and Regina can’t–

 

“I have to– I need some help with the tea,” she manages, hoping desperately that Emma will take the hint. They’re always in sync, always perfectly attuned to each other to the point that they have conversations in an instant with only their eyes, but tonight she feels hopelessly lost. The silent connection between them feels frayed, and she can’t see at all what’s on Emma’s mind.

 

Emma still knows her cues, though, and she stands. “Sure thing, Grandma,” she says, meandering past Regina through the foyer.

 

“Stop,” Regina says desperately when they reach the kitchen. “Stop calling me that.” She doesn’t know what makes her more uncomfortable about it– the implication that she has any familial ties to Emma and Snow through a marriage she’d had no choice in or the fact that she’d been passionately kissing Emma in this room just six weeks ago.

 

Emma shrugs. “I’m just keeping it real,” she says, and Regina can see more now than she could in the study. She sees the jerky way that Emma moves, the way her face twists and untwists as though she floats within her own despair, sucking in air when she bobs to the surface. She sees Emma’s eyes in hollow agony,  _ please, please, please _ …

 

“Please,” Regina whispers, and she reaches for Emma. Emma sidesteps, avoids her, reaches up to the counter to snatch a set of teacups. They’re the ones that Snow had purchased for her years ago, delicate and tasteful and just beside the  _ World’s Best Moms _ duo of mugs that Henry had gotten for them on Mother’s Day last year. 

 

Emma flits over to the pantry as Regina watches helplessly, searching for the tea bags. “Don’t tell him,” she says. There’s a moment of uncertainty–  _ don’t tell him about the king? don’t tell him about us? don’t tell him about _ – and Emma clarifies, “Don’t tell him about the Queen.” 

 

Of course, Emma’s first concern is protecting her. Shame and guilt mix into a potent lather of self-loathing, and Regina steadies herself against a counter and reminds herself to breathe. “I can’t keep it a secret,” she points out. “I won’t lie to him.” 

 

“No,” Emma says, and she sounds very sad about it. “But let him get to know you first, okay? Give yourself a fighting chance.”  _ Give yourself a fighting chance,  _ as though Emma already knows about every self-destructive impulse Regina fights daily. “You’ve been given a second chance, Regina. You owe it to yourself to take it.” Regina stares at her, wordless with dismay, and Emma’s smile turns brittle and vulnerable. “Good thing you weren’t ready for a relationship six weeks ago, huh?” she says, eyes gleaming, and Regina’s stomach turns. “That might have made all of this really awkward.” 

 

“Emma,” Regina chokes out, reaching for her. 

 

Emma dodges backward, away from Regina. “He’s the love of your life,” she says, her hand squeezed around the doorway as though it might steady her. “Trust me, my mom’s going to be  _ pissed  _ if you spent all those years hunting her down over him and you don’t even try now. Stop…whatever you’re going to do because you think you don’t deserve this,” she says, her voice strained. “No one deserves it more. You’ve worked too hard to have your happiness destroyed, remember?” 

 

Regina remembers– remembers the first time that Emma had said that, eyes wild and desperate as she’d taken on the darkness in Regina’s place. She remembers the despair of the moment, the gripped terror of losing Emma, the way she’d craved only to hold her for the long day until they’d found Emma again. She remembers weeks spent hovering, wondering, dreaming, and she wants only to hold Emma again now.

 

Emma is like a woodland creature today, easily spooked and avoiding her touch, and Regina holds out a hand in slow movements as she would to an injured fawn. Emma jerks away, twists, bolts for the doorway. “I’ve got to go,” she says, and she walks with light steps, darting to the front door as Regina stands in the kitchen doorway with two teacups in her hands.

 

“Don’t disappear on me,” she says, and she struggles to sound casual when they’ve never been casual, to sound as though this is nothing when the space between them is widening into an abyss. Emma gives her a fleeting, agonized smile, and slips out the door without another word.

 

Regina takes the teacup to the study, where Daniel awaits.

 

* * *

 

She has made a life for herself that has depended, at times, on a three-foot force field built only with her face and her smile, with swaying hips and undone buttons and exposing herself to the world while showing nothing at all. She grows weak only when she cares too much–

 

_ You always care too much _ , Emma had said once, curled around her on the floor of Snow’s apartment as they’d let Neal crawl over them.  _ It’s your best quality _ . She’d grinned, uncertain as though she’d thought Regina might be angry, and Regina had traced patterns into Emma’s arm instead and made her shiver. 

 

Regina’s arm still has Emma’s name written on it, and she finds herself pulling back that hand, using her left hand instead as she finds towels in the linen closet and shows Daniel how the bathroom works. “For the sink, you have to–“

 

“I know how to work a sink,” Daniel says, and Regina falls silent as he reaches to touch her cheek. His hand cups her face, fingers trailing against her skin, and it’s rougher than Emma’s hand, bigger and clumsier. When she’d been a girl, she’d dreamed of holding those hands in her own, of feeling them on her arms as they’d ride together. Emma, she thinks, would not ride horses with any sort of skill. She’s too restless, too impatient, and she was not made for a life in the Enchanted Forest.

 

Daniel’s eyes are intent on hers, and she can’t bear for him to see what she hides beneath the surface. “Will you tell me about the years I missed?” he asks.

 

“I have a son,” Regina blurts out, a burst of honestly amidst a wave of secrets. Daniel’s eyes flicker, for a moment, his expression faltering, and she hurries to clarify, “I adopted him fifteen years ago. He’s everything.”

 

Daniel’s eyes clear, and he says, “What is his name?” 

 

“Henry,” Regina breathes, and he’s the only thing about tonight that she’s sure of. “Henry Daniel Mills.” 

 

She had named Henry in her mind a dozen times, always the same two names.  _ Henry Daniel. Daniel Henry. _ One loss for each descent into darkness, one name for someone who had left a gaping hole in her heart. Henry had been the one to replace both lost men, gifted her with love, with redemption, with…with  _ family _ , and Emma’s name burns on her arm. Henry had healed her, and speaking his name to Daniel feels as though she’s evoked something sacred.

 

Daniel beams at her, light-eyed and joyful, and she can’t watch him for too long, is the night too burned by his sun. “I would like to meet him.” 

 

“In the morning,” Regina promises, and she ushers Daniel into the guest room, shows him the lights and the bed and putters around until she can’t find anything more to say. He touches her shoulder to still her– he touches her so much, careful and gentle as he’d always been with her when she’d been young.

 

Emma’s touches are never careful, are casual with all the confidence of one who knows she’ll never be turned away. Emma has only been careful once, her touch so tentative it had felt as though the wind could shatter the contact, had it only been a little harder, and that had been six weeks ago in Regina’s kitchen with Emma’s lips on hers. 

 

Daniel leans forward now, brushes a rough kiss to Regina’s cheek, and Regina flinches without thinking. Daniel jerks back as though he’d been stung, and Regina closes her eyes, is ashamed. 

 

Daniel recovers first. “Good night,” he murmurs, and his smile is sad. Regina can’t bear it, can’t know that she’s caused him so much pain, and she leans over and kisses his stubbly cheek. Daniel relaxes, and Regina feels as though her tears might erupt now, spilling down her cheeks after years since she’d last wept for Daniel.

 

She slips out of the room and she can breathe again. The air is lighter, less claustrophobic, a mark on her arm burning as deeply as Daniel’s eyes do, and she closes the door to the guest room and leans against it, closing her eyes and exhaling.

 

When she opens her eyes, it’s to see the boy standing in the doorway opposite her, rumpled pajamas and his eyes clearer than her cloudy heart. “What are you going to tell Mom?” Henry whispers, wise beyond his years and too kind to have been only Regina’s.

 

“She already knows,” Regina murmurs, and their somber gazes meet and hold.

 

* * *

 

There had been a time when bringing Snow White to meet Daniel might have been a nightmare, a fever dream from which Regina would awaken, drenched in sweat and dread. Today, though, it’s a welcome reprieve from explaining too much about this land, and Snow gives her significant glances but gives nothing away.

 

She would have expected Snow to be ecstatic, drowning in promises of  _ true love _ and  _ I will always find you _ . It’s a surprise how muted Snow is, graceful and kind and welcoming but with none of the enthusiasm, full-steam-ahead energy that she brings to any discussions about Regina’s romantic life. It’s an unusual look for her, but Regina finds it comforting, trusts Snow in a way that she so rarely does because of it.

 

“We have a program to help new arrivals adapt to Storybrooke,” Snow says, and she smiles at Regina, a little curiously. “I’m surprised that Regina hasn’t told you about it. You’ll be paired with a Storybrooke resident who can give you a tour of this land and help you figure out who you want to be here.”

 

Daniel blinks, clearly overwhelmed. “All I know to do is work with horses,” he says uncertainly. “I know that’s hardly useful in this new world, but–“ 

 

“The animal shelter,” Regina puts in. It’s the first time she’s spoken in a long time. She remembers David working there during the curse, remembers how much she’d resented it. It is some odd twist, perhaps, that Snow had found herself a shepherd to love, a caretaker of animals with that same gentleness as Regina’s stablehand. She had thought, back then, that it had been the place where Daniel had belonged most in Storybrooke.

 

Daniel has no real place in Storybrooke, with its bright colors and constant simmering energy. Daniel is muted and calm, cool earth to Storybrooke’s fire, and Regina is at a loss now that he’s here. 

 

So he goes to the animal shelter. It’s fallen into disrepair over the years, but Daniel is a hard worker and sees only the ways it can be fixed. Regina taps her fingers against a rotting post, a rusted cage, little magical fixes while Daniel’s back is turned, and then she slips out, heading across town.

 

The station is quiet, and Regina wonders with silent dread if it’s empty, if Emma has chosen to avoid her entirely. She had sent her a text late last night, left unanswered, and another this morning. Now, she rubs her arm where Emma’s name is still etched and pushes open the door to the station.

 

The station isn’t empty. Emma is seated at her desk, her head resting against the back of her chair and her eyes closed, and Regina’s heart jumps in her throat. If Daniel is earth and Regina is fire, Emma is rushing water, easily agitated and always racing in one direction or another, coursing waves that rarely rest and can never be held back. Emma at rest is a precious, lovely thing, and Regina takes her in with breathless affection. 

 

And because Emma is never still for long, an eye cracks open under Regina’s scrutiny. “Oh,” Emma exhales, and Regina’s fingers tighten around Emma’s mark. “Where’s…where’s Daniel?” 

 

It isn’t accusing, but there is devastation lurking beneath it, etched into the underframe of every word. Regina gulps in a breath, her voice hoarse. “I set him up at the animal shelter,” she says. “I think…it would be a good fit.” 

 

“There’s definitely a need for it,” Emma says, managing a small smile. “It feels like we have more and more stray pets running loose every day. My job is going to be cut in half in a week.” She swallows, and then her voice is lower, gentler, as though she senses every time it gets too sharp and amends it. “How is it going with him?”

 

Her eyes are fathomless, unreadable, and Regina feels as though any answer might be a trap. “I didn’t come here to talk about him,” she says, and she takes an unsteady step forward. “I wanted to talk about you. Us.” It sounds illicit, a stolen moment when they haven’t been reduced to stolen moments in years, and Regina flushes and looks down. 

 

Emma’s eyes are trained on her, solemn and pained. “I can’t do this,” she murmurs. “You know I can’t…” She breathes. “I don’t want to stand in the way of your happiness.” 

 

As though there is any happiness without Emma, bright-eyed humor and exasperated fondness and hot dreams of kisses that pluck at Regina’s skin and play it like a harp, making it sing. As though there is any happiness without the mother of her son fighting beside her and laughing opposite her, stealing her food off her plate and whispering  _ you okay?  _ whenever Regina so much as blinks wrong. As though there is any happiness without her partner in crime, her ally, her closest friend– 

 

“No,” she says, and she moves around the desk. Emma watches her warily, with deep trepidation and a little fear, as though she doesn’t know what devastation Regina might wreak. Regina circles the desk, leans back to sit on it, and says again, her voice firm and strong, “ _ No _ .” 

 

Emma had once been her nemesis, had once been the one who might be her undoing. Regina had learned to recognize and identify every threat that Emma might pose, had studied her as though understanding Emma might be the key to Regina’s salvation. That old understanding of Emma hasn’t faded, and Emma bears the same skill when it comes to Regina. They know each other now, know what meanings lie beyond every word. 

 

_ No _ , because Regina will be damned if she loses Emma.  _ No _ , because she doesn’t even know what Daniel being here means, not when the very earth has shifted beneath her feet in the decades since he’d gone.  _ No _ , because it might be the most selfish thing she’s ever done, but she can’t let Emma withdraw now. 

 

_ No _ , and Emma exhales in a shuddering sigh and whispers, “Okay,” because she is water, enveloped in Regina’s fire, but they sizzle and burn together.

 

* * *

 

The animal shelter is a good fit for Daniel, just as expected, and he returns home each day with bright, happy news of what he’s done with the rooms and the cages and the stray animals that Emma and others have begun to bring him. There is a strange role reversal to a Daniel who seems so  _ young _ , who is full of youthful energy that had once seemed so mature to a teenaged Regina. Regina feels her age in her bones, even if twenty-eight years had passed as a phantom. Invisible in their marks on her, but unforgettable. She is less than a decade older than Daniel now, but when he sits beside Henry at the dinner table and chats happily with him, it is easy to see them both as children.

 

She shakes her head at her own silliness when she considers it the next afternoon. Emma Swan is just a few years older than Daniel, and she has never felt too old to be her equal. Emma Swan, who lies on the floor of the animal shelter with a big dog on top of her, eagerly lapping at her face as Emma protests. “Enough!” she says, swiping at her wet face with her sleeve. “Henry,  _ help! _ ” 

 

Henry is laughing, Daniel beside him with his eyes twinkling, and neither one makes any move to help Emma. “I think she likes you,” Henry observes. The dog barks happily, snuffling at Emma’s ear as Emma attempts to dodge her. “The house is too big for just the two of us.” 

 

“I remember when you tried that one on me,” Regina retorts, rolling her eyes at him. “And that was for a much cuter puppy.” This dog is…well, kind of  _ ugly _ , a squashed face and an odd lumpy body. It’s the product of too much inbreeding, and it has a tendency to run away and wreak havoc with the best-kept gardens in Storybrooke. She winds up in Regina’s garden a dozen times a month, at which point Regina heaves a sigh that fools no one and calls the sheriff’s station to retrieve the dog. 

 

Emma gives her an outraged look. “She’s beautiful,” she protests, head listing back to let the dog chew her hair. Henry brightens, and she shoots him a glare. “We are  _ not  _ adopting her, though.” 

 

Henry lets out an aggrieved sigh. Regina smothers her grin and slips into the next room, where she can look over the records that Daniel has been painstakingly keeping by hand. His handwriting is childish, unpracticed in many years, and Regina enters each of the records into the computer as she keeps an ear out. 

 

“Henry lives with you, too?” Daniel is saying, sounding baffled at this development. “You’re his…” Regina can nearly hear him attempting to calculate the family connections in his head before Emma cuts him off. 

 

“Mother,” she says abruptly. “I’m his birth mother. Regina and I share custody of him.” The dog whimpers, and there’s a bit of silence that has Regina on edge. She has protected her relationship with Emma from Daniel for reasons she can’t explain, and has been unnecessarily secretive about even that.

 

She knows Daniel must be wondering why, and she stares blankly at the pages in front of her, her breathing shallow. “Ah,” he says. “That explains a lot, actually. You two seem rather close.” 

 

“Yeah.” The dog whines, and Regina can hear Emma getting up. She indulges in imagining it for a moment, Emma wiping off the dog slobber again, that careless smile on her face that means that she does in fact care very much, the shrug that fools only those who don’t know her well. “We were kind of dicks to each other about it when Henry first brought me to town,” Emma admits, and Regina snorts despite herself, blinking back absurd, uncalled-for tears. “But we figured it out along the way, I guess. We’re family.” 

 

A moment of hesitation, and then Emma says, a little puggish, “So I guess you’re family, too, being Regina’s one true love and all that.” 

 

Regina winces. Daniel laughs, and it sounds strained. “I don’t know about that. It’s been a very long time,” he says, and Regina is relieved at his response for reasons she won’t examine. “We’re just getting to know each other again now.” 

 

Henry has drifted into the next room, on the opposite side of the shelter as Regina; Regina can hear him chattering to the birds as he feeds them. Emma’s voice is rougher with him gone, less careful, and she says, “Regina’s been through a lot since those stables, and it’s made her…really fucking strong, you know?” A moment of silence, and then, “But she puts her heart on the line, and she doesn’t always think about how it might break her.” Regina inhales, imagining Emma with eyes narrowed and flashing, protective and so, so dear. “You hurt her at  _ all _ , and I swear I’m gonna come after you.” The words are steely, and Regina closes her eyes, her heart very warm.

 

Daniel speaks, and his voice is careful but not dismissive at all. “She was always too good for me,” he says wryly, and the girl in Regina wants to jump up right then, to hotly deny that, a rebel after years of Mother telling her exactly that. “I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.” 

 

“Good,” Emma says fiercely, and then her voice softens. “She deserves that.” 

 

Another moment, in which Regina has trouble breathing past the lump in her throat, in which she can only think of  _ Emma, Emma _ , and everything around Emma is blurred into shapeless shades of grey as Emma seems to glow. Then Daniel says, “Now about this dog–“ 

 

“I can barely handle a teenager,” Emma says, shaking her head. “I’m not bringing a dog home.” Regina can hear her crouch, her voice turning stern. “You have to stop showing up at my house, too,” she says. “I’m not going to keep feeding you. There’s an animal shelter now, and someone’s going to take you in and–“ She stops, considering, because everyone who’s seen that dog knows that no one is taking her home. A frustrated exhale is the only sign that Emma has realized this as well.

 

“I  _ won’t _ ,” she says, and Daniel laughs as Emma grumps. It’s a strange combination of sounds to hear at once, the past buzzing in her ears in time with the future, and Regina leans back and listens to Daniel tease and Emma deny it, her heart warm and pulsing.

 

* * *

 

The dog has a name now, of sorts. It had happened as a defiant comeback to Regina’s dubious comments, Emma calling her  _ beauty  _ over and over again until Beauty had begun to answer to it. “See, she’s beauty  _ and  _ the beast,” Henry explains to Belle, who is looking a bit nonplussed at the dog resting under their table outdoors at Granny’s. 

 

Beauty is officially still under Daniel’s care, but she follows Emma everywhere, and Emma is resigned to her now. “Dumb dog,” she mutters under her breath, slipping food under the table to her. Daniel grins at her, amused at this budding romance, and Regina watches her with warm eyes she can’t seem to temper.

 

Emma’s gaze on her is hot, always hot, always wanting, and Regina excuses herself from the table and slips into the diner. She goes to the hallway by the bathroom, stares at herself in the mirror and washes her hands at the sink until she’s calm and the discomfort in her eyes has faded.

 

When she returns to their table, Emma is finishing up and making her excuses to leave, and Regina watches her go with longing. 

 

It’s the last time she sees Emma in days, which isn’t unheard of but certainly isn’t what Regina wants. Emma is always on patrol when Regina pops in at the station, always texting apologetic rejections to her dinner invites. Perhaps it had been selfish to demand that Emma stay here while this  _ Daniel thing _ sorts itself out, and Regina can’t  _ blame  _ her, but the writing on her arm burns with the same throbbing as her heart.

 

Daniel first brings up the mark on her arm after weeks of his eyes flickering over it curiously. His reading is as childlike as his writing, even after some practice books and Snow’s help, and he must have wondered but hadn’t said anything until they’d been transferring reports again and one had arrived from the station. 

 

His fingers run over Emma’s signature for a moment, his brow furrowed, and he says, “This is…” and then his fingers are on Regina’s arm. 

 

Regina yanks her arm back so quickly that Daniel looks hurt, then contemplative, and the last thing Regina wants is Daniel to contemplate that too much. “I’m sorry,” she says swiftly. “Reflex.” She smiles at him, warm and bright, and he smiles back easily.

 

That had been one of the things she’d loved most about him, when she’d been a girl. It had been so easy to smile with him, to feel love like a warm cocoon around them. It is easy to smile around Emma now, to fall into playful patterns and light grins, but that had been so much toil, blood and sweat and tears to get to that point. There is a wonder that comes with smiling with Emma, an awe at how far they’ve come–

 

Will there be a single moment with Daniel when she isn’t thinking about Emma?

 

“Emma doodled on me with a marker once,” she explains, apologetic, and Daniel watches her, head tilted. “It has yet to come off.” 

 

Daniel smiles again. “She really is a character, that Emma. I’m glad that you’ve had friends like her with you.” The words are lightly inquisitive, just as more and more of their conversations have become lately. Daniel asks questions; but he never asks the right ones– how could he, when  _ did you seize power and terrorize villages and cast a dark curse over all the land _ isn’t even in his lexicon– and so Regina continues to only answer what she must. 

 

It isn’t about deceiving him, though it feels uncomfortably like that at times. It isn’t even about giving herself a chance to know him again first, no matter what Emma had suggested. Daniel is  _ good.  _ She’d wondered at times over the years if she’d overestimated that, if she’d remembered him with rose-colored glasses and built him up to an impossible standard. But here he is with her, gentle and kind and innocent, exactly the man she’d believed him to be.

 

And she isn’t  _ innocent _ . She’d lost her innocence in a stable decades ago, had been forced into a marriage and killed her way out of it, had been consumed by vengeance and hatred and done vile, vile things. She craves to be gentle and kind, but she doubts she has that capacity, not with her history. And she has no heart to expose Daniel to the truth of who she is.

 

Emma would disagree with her, but Emma knows her weathered by her past, destroyed and rebuilt with pieces that don’t quite lock together. Emma wouldn’t recognize the girl she’d been. Regina doesn’t know if she’d recognize her, either, except in the reflection of Daniel’s eyes.

 

_ Emma _ , who is avoiding her, and whose mark on her arm she’s caressing absently as Daniel looks on. “I’m fortunate to have her,” she says quietly, letting her fingers fall to the table. “Do you…you like her, don’t you?” It’s important to her for reasons she can’t name that Daniel likes Emma, that he understands how vital she is to Regina. 

 

“I do,” Daniel says, and then he laughs. “Though not quite as much as Beauty does, I suppose.” 

 

Regina laughs with him, and her eyes flicker to her phone again and again until a text message pops up. It isn’t from Emma. It’s Snow, and Regina exhales in disappointment and squints down at the writing.  _ Just realized that I haven’t seen Emma in days. Is she ok? _

 

“I have to go,” Regina says suddenly, because of course Emma is  _ okay _ . Henry has been there for the week, and he pops into her office on the way home, stealing chocolates from her drawer to give to Emma. He hasn’t mentioned anything worrying, but…

 

But. Emma taking distance from both her mother and Regina is a red flag, and Regina  _ misses  _ her, can’t bear to be away from her any longer. “I’ve got to take care of something,” she says, rising, and Daniel gives her a curious look. “I’ll see you at home later, all right?” She reaches out to give Daniel an awkward little hug that turns into an awkward little pat on the back, and then she makes a beeline for the door before he can comment on it.

 

Emma is on patrol again when she stops in at the station, and her desk is astonishingly clean, as though she’s done little  _ but  _ patrol over the past week. Regina scowls and reaches out with her magic, searching for Emma’s familiar magic in turn, and finds it on the other side of town.

 

It takes a brief instant before she teleports beside her, landing neatly in the passenger seat. “Hello, Miss Swan,” Regina says, and Emma jolts in her seat, banging her head against the ceiling of the car.

 

“What the hell, Regina? Someone could have been  _ sitting  _ there!” Emma protests. Her hair is loose, straight and a little limp, the way it gets when she sleeps in and has to run late to work. 

 

Regina fingers a lock critically. “Your mother has been worried.” 

 

“She’s always worried.” 

 

“She hasn’t seen you in a while.” 

 

A shrug, an exhale. “I haven’t been in the mood for hope speeches.” Emma says it with the barest grimace, an admission that says everything and nothing at once. Regina watches her, and for the first time, she understands how Daniel can observe so much so silently. There is something to grasp in how Emma leans back against her seat, in how her eyes flicker to Regina and back out the windshield. There is something about every movement Emma makes that is a piece of a larger picture, and Regina is transfixed and stymied by it. “I’m sorry I worried her,” Emma says finally.

 

Regina snorts, dismissive. “I don’t give a damn if she’s worried,” she says, though they both know that that’s a lie by now. Snow is Regina’s family as much as she is Emma’s. It seems unfathomably foolish at times, to give Snow White the power to hurt her, but love is rarely stopped by even the best reasoning. “I don’t like you being alone.” 

 

“I have Henry,” Emma objects at once, and she shrugs and turns off the car, the two of them at the side of the road as a few stray cars roll past them. “I’ve just been…I don’t know, Regina.” Her voice is raw with wistfulness and hurt, and Regina reaches for her and lets her hand fall. “I’m trying to be good, okay? I’m trying to…to figure out how to deal with my own fucking–“ She stops, blinking away tears, and Regina shakes her head vigorously, reaches for her.

 

Emma pushes her away. “No,” she says firmly, neck straight and tall and jaw clenched. “No, you can’t fix this for me.” 

 

“Let me try,” and she doesn’t know what she’s offering except that she would do it, whatever it is, whatever she can, if only Emma might smile. 

 

Emma shakes her head violently, thrusts her hand away again. “For fuck’s sake, Regina, go  _ home _ ,” she snaps, and it’s angry in a way that Emma never is with her, that makes Regina recoil. “I’m sorry,” Emma says a moment later, chagrined. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…” 

 

She pushes the car door open and dives out, slamming the door behind her and leaning against its side. Regina waits a minute before she follows, stepping gingerly from the car and moving to stand beside Emma. “Emma,” she murmurs, and Emma slumps beside her, twists and reaches out to cradle Regina’s face in one hand.

 

It’s tender and rough at once, Emma’s hand jerky but her fingers gentle, and Regina craves her touch like air.  _ The Evil Queen, tamed by the savior’s touch _ , she thinks.  _ If I were a stray puppy, I wouldn’t leave her side either _ , she thinks.  _ Never let go _ , she thinks, and Emma’s hand falls to her side, is trapped midway there by Regina’s fingers tangling into hers.

 

They watch each other unblinkingly, and Emma doesn’t turn away for a long time. When she does, Regina brushes a kiss to her cheek as Emma shudders, desperate for something more that is beyond them, that has always been beyond them, and teleports back home.

 

She’s so turned around that she forgets until she’s suddenly standing in the kitchen behind Daniel, and he twists in surprise from the stew he’s stirring. “I didn’t hear you come in,” he says, and she lurches forward, seizes his collar and kisses him as hard as she can manage, desperate to–

 

_ Emma _ , she thinks hopelessly, and she’s pulling away just as he begins to reciprocate. The kiss feels wrong, like a relic of another time, and she doesn’t know why she’d even tried, when she’s always known that it would. They aren’t ready for this. Daniel doesn’t even  _ know _ her yet, and she wipes her lips and is embarrassed, is in guilty agony over Emma, to whom she’d made no promises but still had broken one, somehow. 

 

“I’m so sorry,” she says, humiliated under Daniel’s kind gaze. “I’m so sorry.”

 

* * *

 

When she had envisioned Daniel returned to her in the past, it had always taken a sort of fairytale-misty aura to make it work. Daniel, appearing in the castle, and helping her to flee the king as though she wouldn’t be hunted down for it. Daniel, seeing her as the Evil Queen and never questioning it, his goodness untouchable but still without judgment as she’d continue to enact her vengeance. Daniel in Storybrooke, raising Henry with her and asking no questions about why it is that only they have their memories.She had always known that Daniel had had no place in the world she’d built as the Queen, and her fairytale dreams had kept him pristine, innocent, yet supportive of her at her worst. 

 

After she had tried to revive him with Whale’s help, after he had seized her throat and then known her and gasped out  _ then love again _ , after she had seen his face and known she’d caused him pain…the fantasies of Daniel returning had faded at last.

 

And now he’s here, and she’d never quite considered how that would go, Daniel in Storybrooke with a changed Regina. He walks beside her, Beauty loose again and snuffling at their feet as she searches Main Street for Emma, and she says again, “I really am sorry about last night.” 

 

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Daniel says, calm and unyielding about this. “If you don’t feel as though you’re prepared for us to… We can be friends, Regina. We  _ are  _ friends, and I’m very grateful for it.” His eyes are warm, still so  _ good  _ to her, and Regina is ashamed again. 

 

“I want to–“ She swallows. “I want to be ready for that,” she says, and it feels like an untruth on her tongue, sour and wrong. She looks down. “I rushed things,” she says finally. “I don’t know what came over me.” 

 

She doesn’t know what had come over her, except that she’d desperately needed to  _ kiss _ , had been buzzing with the desire and had craved it with her heart and soul, and she’d lurched forward and ruined everything. 

 

Beauty whines, rubbing against her leg, and Regina scratches the dog’s ears. “She really is an ugly little beast,” she says fondly. 

 

Daniel crouches down to rub Beauty’s neck soothingly. “Regina,” he says, and his words are tentative. “If there is…if there’s some reason why you wouldn’t want to…to kiss me…” 

 

“No!” Regina hurries to deny. “No, of course not!” But it sounds false even to her ears, and she takes a step back. 

 

“If there’s someone else,” Daniel says gently. “ _ Is  _ there someone else?” His eyes are knowing, and Regina flinches, looks away, struggles to find the right words to explain  _ no  _ but also  _ yes _ but of course it’s  _ no _ –

 

Beauty saves her. Beauty suddenly barks loudly, enthusiastically, and charges past them, nearly bowling Daniel over as he shoots across the street. Emma is just emerging from the station, brightening as she sees Beauty. Daniel lifts his hand in a wave.

 

Regina takes in all of this in a blur, feels the world seem to freeze and come to a point in one specific spot, just down the road from Emma, just down the road from Beauty.

 

A car is careening down Main Street at top speed, and Regina sees as though in slow-motion as it approaches, a teen in the driver’s seat and music blasting and no awareness of the dog happily waddling across the street. The car hurtles down the street, and Daniel lets out an alarmed gasp beside her as Regina waves her hand and Beauty disappears an instant before the car reaches her. 

 

She reappears beside them in a puff of purple, whining puzzledly as she looks around, and Regina breathes a sigh of relief. “ _ Careful _ ,” she admonishes the dog. Emma charges over to the car as it screeches to a stop, and Regina looks after her with satisfaction before she turns to Daniel.

 

She had forgotten. Well. Perhaps not forgotten, exactly. The awareness had lingered in the back of her mind like Emma with her eyes hollow with agony,  _ don’t tell him about the Queen. _ Don’t use magic around him, don’t let him  _ know _ , not yet, not until she’s  _ ready _ …

 

But she hadn’t thought, had only reacted, and Beauty is wagging her tail happily as Daniel gapes at Regina. “Did you…did you just…?” 

 

She bows her head, and Daniel sputters, “Magic?” He’s taken so much in stride in Storybrooke, has adapted remarkably well to a new world and technology and all the years he’s lost, but Regina with magic has him at a loss. “You have magic,” he repeats slowly. “Like Cora did? Dark magic?” 

 

He takes an unconscious step back, his hand sliding up to his heart, and Regina flinches, has no response that won’t destroy her. He’s going to find out everything, now. Whatever might be between them, Regina can’t bear the thought of seeing Daniel’s eyes fade into fear around her.  _ This _ – this is the image that will be seared into her mind, Daniel with his gaze startled and uncertain, staring at her as though she’s a stranger–

 

“Hey!” Emma barks out from behind them, and Beauty bounds past Daniel to her. “Watch the way you talk to her!” Her eyes are blazing with protectiveness. There’s little Emma loves more than  _ protecting _ , than fighting for the people she cares about. “She’s been through far too much for you to treat her like she’s–”

 

Her fists are clenched, her eyes dark, and Regina cuts her off, frustrated and afraid and angry at no one but herself. “ _ Enough _ ,” she snaps, too harsh and loud, and Emma doesn’t step down, looks ready to argue with her. “This has nothing to do with you. Stay away from me,” Regina bites out, heart racing and suddenly frantic to escape this street, this place where people stare and where Daniel looks as though he might be afraid. Emma recoils, face dark with hurt, and Regina stalks off, back to her office in a rush of panic, and she knows that no one will follow.

 

* * *

 

Lunch is a quiet affair without Emma popping in with a brown bag from Granny’s in hand. Regina skips eating altogether, eyes flickering miserably to the door too often for it to be coincidence, rubbing the mark on her arm and staring down at her hands, over and over. 

 

Sometimes, when she’s lost in thoughts of being at her worst, she opens her hand and lets little flowers sprout from her palm, a tiny reminder that she can create something good and pure, regardless of who she’s been. Today, no flowers can mend her self-recriminations, and she lets flames emerge from her palm instead and turn them to dust.

 

She’d once been bold enough to call herself a  _ hero _ , to believe herself redeemed and good because her heart is ruby-red again. More often, she dwells instead, a dark voice within her cajoling in whispers and seductive promises if she’ll only set it free. More often, she thinks of how many voices and hearts and souls have been silenced because of her, and she knows that there will never be redemption. She can atone and she can be a person with whom the people she loves can live, but she can never undo the past.

 

Daniel had been the first casualty, because she’d been reckless instead of evil. There is no possible world where she would deserve to have him back, not after the horrors she’d done in his name. He should never have known any of this, should have been allowed  _ peace _ , but instead, cruel fate had given him dreadful knowledge, had made a mockery of her bitterness and anger.

 

And yet, it isn’t Daniel she weeps for in the silence of her office. His face flits through her mind, but it’s followed by another at once, green-blue eyes darkening with hurt and Emma taking a step back as though she’d been slapped. She’d lashed out at Emma; and while it may have been their comfortable reality in the past, they’re more fragile now. They’ve peeled off the layers that had kept them secure and strong, have let the other see their weaknesses, all with the awareness that they trust the other not to strike where it would land.

 

Instead, she’d pushed Emma away, and she closes her eyes and lets tears leak out from beneath her eyelids as she wonders desolately which wounds might never heal. 

 

She works in silence that afternoon, makes few phone calls and does busy work rather than to interact too much with others. Henry is due back home today after school, which is a relief; it means he’ll stop at the station to see Emma instead of stopping at her office to talk to her when she’s shaky and vulnerable. There are few barriers between them, but Regina fears that Henry might be just as angry as Emma, might be just as quick to defend the indefensible.

 

It’s what family does, perhaps; pushing aside the past to build a better future.

 

The front door is already open when she arrives at home, but it’s too early for it to be Henry. Regina can feel the dread gnawing at her stomach, roiling until she’s nauseous and afraid of what might come next. “Daniel?” she says, shutting the door carefully behind her, and Daniel emerges into the foyer.

 

“Regina,” Daniel says, and he isn’t smiling. She follows him into the kitchen, where he’s made a pot of soup that smells just as Cook’s had when she’d been a child. He ladles out a bowl for her, sets it down at the little table, and says, “I don’t know if I remember the recipe exactly, but I tried…” His voice trails off, and he smiles for the first time, uncertain. “I remember it was your favorite.” 

 

“Why?” Regina says. She means to say  _ thank you _ , she means to say  _ I’m sorry _ , she means to say  _ how can you even be in this house right now?  _ But  _ why?  _ emerges instead, fearful and injured, and Daniel’s eyes soften.

 

He clears his throat. “An apology,” he says, and he smiles again, this time soft and affectionate. “I reacted…too quickly to your magic. I know there are many types, and I don’t judge you for yours.” Regina stares disbelievingly, and Daniel murmurs, “I would never intentionally imply that you were anything like your mother. I love you.” He tilts his head, so soft, so trusting, and it’s too much.

 

She  _ can’t _ , she can’t let him exonerate her with a smile and a shrug and a bowl of soup. He should never know what she’d done in his name, but he shouldn’t be here at  _ all _ , and that’s done for, isn’t it? And he should never trust her, and certainly,  _ certainly _ never love her. “You love me?” she echoes in despair. “You  _ love _ me? Do you know what they call me?” 

 

His brow furrows, and she bites it out, her voice falling into smooth, low cadences that are as much a part of her as any other shield she keeps around her heart. “The  _ Evil Queen _ ,” she bites out, and she sees the moment that Daniel’s face pales, just a tiny bit. “I became a monster after your death, Daniel. I destroyed lives. I destroyed whole villages. I  _ murdered  _ and I pillaged and I spent a dozen years despising Snow White and trying to destroy her, all for telling Mother about our plans to escape.”  _ No _ , not just for that, and she can feel the loathing thrumming through her veins: no longer at Snow, only at herself. “I spent years as a queen in that big, empty castle, waiting only for the day when I would strangle the king in his own bed– when I would take his heart and crush it in my hands– when I could punish a whole kingdom for everything I’d been forced to endure.”

 

Daniel is watching her, his lips pressed tightly together as Regina spins around to gesture at the room around them. “Do you know why we’re here in Storybrooke? I cast a curse to take away everyone else’s happy endings,” she snarls. “And maybe I’ve  _ changed _ , for Henry or for– for my family. Maybe I’ve been trying to redeem myself and make up for all that I’ve done. But I know I’m still  _ her _ , no matter how hard I can pretend.” She clutches at her chest, over her heart, feeling it  _ taptaptap  _ against her hand. “I’m still the Evil Queen,” she hisses, Daniel gazing at her in silence. “Could you really love someone so vile?” 

 

It’s her final judgment, the moment when it all comes together. Decades of evil in Daniel’s name, and now Daniel will reject her, as she deserves. Now, she receives the final repercussions for her actions. Snow has been a blind fool to forgive her, but she has had her own less-than-shining moments. Henry and Emma have always been far beyond her, gifting her forgiveness only because they’re heroes too determined to let her go.

 

Daniel is no hero. Daniel is only a stable boy who had fallen in love with a girl who had been good, and he has only been a victim. Daniel isn’t stubborn, but he isn’t weak, either, and he will damn her now and she will accept it.

 

Daniel says, “I could. I could love you,” and he smiles at her, his eyes wet and his heart glowing within them. Regina’s stomach twists, and she staggers back a step. “But you couldn’t love me.” 

 

She may deserve it, but it hurts like a blinding pain through her, like a reminder again of the truth. “Because I’m not capable of love,” she says dully.

 

Daniel shakes his head urgently. “No, Regina.  _ No _ .” He takes a step forward, lifts her hands into his, and she hates herself a tiny bit more for noticing how they’re rough and calloused, nothing like smooth, gentle hands that sometimes find their way into her grasp. “You’ve been through more than I can imagine,” he whispers. “You’ve endured…all this darkness, and you’ve come out of it as a woman who leads her town, who loves her son, who cares so deeply for the people around her. You’re beyond me,” he says, and she stares at him, tears spilling freely down her cheeks. “I may have been who you loved when you were a girl who only wanted to be free of her mother. Maybe I was who you needed then.” He smiles sadly. “But we both know that I’m not who you need or want or love now.” 

 

_ Absurd _ , that she could have Daniel and give him up.  _ Absurd, _ that she could love him less now than she had loved him before.  _ Absurd _ , that she would squander this  _ chance _ , this single opportunity to have the happy ending she’s always craved.

 

She’s staring at the mark on her arm, and she only notices that now. It’s faded, but it’s still stark against her skin, writing that has always felt far too significant to make it vanish with a simple spell. Daniel reaches out to touch the mark, guiding her hand with his. “You don’t have to be afraid of being happy anymore,” he murmurs. “You’ve fought so hard to be here today, like this.” A tear falls, sliding across the mark to be caught against her thumb. “You deserve a love that’s worthy of you,” Daniel says gently, and his words feel almost like an invocation.

 

* * *

 

Emma is still at the station when Regina arrives there, fiddling with a little toy that Regina had given to her for her last birthday. There had also been a new leather jacket in the box, the fidget toy resting atop it, and Emma hadn’t noticed the jacket. Regina had hidden her amusement as Emma had struggled to gush over it, very puzzled.

 

That’s  _ Emma _ , a bit dense at times but so kind-hearted that Regina still quails at the thought that she’d hurt her earlier. Emma hasn’t been crying, she notices at once, because she’s tuned enough to Emma to be aware when she is. But her eyes are hard when she looks up, carefully shielded from Regina’s, and Regina swallows. “Henry just left,” Emma says, her words curt.

 

The words escape, stutter from her mouth in a strained burst of dismay. Apologies had never been her forte; they emerge grudgingly and with much effort. But today, they spill from her lips in a rush, desperate to penetrate the ice that surrounds Emma right now. “I’m  _ sorry _ ,” Regina says pleadingly. “Emma, I’m so sorry. I never should have snapped at you–” 

 

Emma shrugs, and with it comes...shoulders slumped in defeat, a smile that doesn’t meet her eyes. “I deserved it,” she says, and Regina has broken that shield of ice, perhaps, but struck Emma in the process. “You were right. It had nothing to do with me. I got so used to…” She laughs, a little rueful, a little bashful. “I liked being your white knight, you know?” 

 

_ Oh _ , and Regina’s heart soars, her words careful. “My white knight?” 

 

“You know,” Emma repeats, and she fidgets some more. “Swooping in to help you when you need it, or whenever anyone looks at you wrong. It just…I guess it didn’t occur to me that you might not have wanted it with Daniel.” She sighs. “He’s a really good guy, you know? I thought…if he were an ass, at least, I could hate him in peace. But I  _ like  _ him.” She sounds almost sulky about it. “He’ll never be good enough for you, but no one will.” 

 

Regina scoffs despite herself, and Emma rolls her eyes at her in response. “Whatever, Regina,” she says, but she softens, smiling up at Regina with so much sheer longing in her eyes that Regina doesn’t know how she didn’t– before– _ you don’t have to be afraid of being happy before _ , Daniel had said, as though he’d known about kitchen kisses that had been breathless and light for a moment before reality had set in. “I’m happy for you,” Emma murmurs. “You deserve your true love, you know? That epic love story.” The smile still doesn’t quite reach her eyes, the words faltering.

 

“Emma,” Regina whispers, and she takes a step forward. Emma doesn’t interrupt her, waits in silence, and maybe they both know how this ends, after all, just as they’d known how it would begin in that kitchen that day. “Didn’t I already tell you I love you?” 

 

Emma’s eyes burn bright enough to light a thousand suns. Regina has only been privy to this face on rare occasions, the vulnerable smile that emerges only for Regina, only with the same tentative smile creeping onto her face. “I didn’t think it  _ mattered _ ,” she admits, and she laughs, that same breathless laugh from the kitchen. “Daniel is…” 

 

“Daniel is a good friend,” Regina says, and she moves forward again, pries the fidget toy out of Emma’s hand and clasps it in her own instead. “But he isn’t my future.” 

 

Losing Daniel had felt like losing her chance at happiness, at ever being gifted with that joy again. She’s spent decades believing that her happy ending had been stripped cruelly from her,  _ love is weakness  _ and  _ a place where the only happy ending will be mine _ . She’s spent too long certain that happiness would mean contentment, and the fragile peace that she’d built has been enough for her.  _ My happy ending is finally feeling at home in the world _ , she’d sworn, and she’d been certain that even one tiny change would destroy even that.

 

And then her happy ending–  _ happiness _ – had fallen out of a portal in her backyard, free for the taking. There are no villains to snatch it away, no sudden threats to distract her, no shenanigans that might have reminded her, again, that she deserves no happiness and will never have it.

 

There’s only Emma Swan with her smile glowing and her signature scrawled onto Regina’s arm, and Regina draws her up from her chair and brings Emma to her, kissing her in a rush of joyful, exhilarated passion.

 

* * *

 

_ After _ , there is happiness.

 

It’s a nearly tangible thing, made of little moments that she can grasp and hold onto: flipping pancakes one morning in Emma’s house while wearing one of Emma’s oversized tees,  _ my girlfriend cursed her whole kingdom into another realm for twenty-eight years and all I got was this lousy t-shirt _ ; stepping into the station and immediately being pushed against a wall and kissed senseless; Beauty adopting Regina as quickly as she’d adopted Emma, trotting after them as they walk together to work and let a hand fall, very gradually, into the other’s.

 

Henry pronounces them  _ gross _ , but with the kind of beaming smile that belies his true feelings. Snow bursts into tears every time Regina so much as makes eye contact with Emma. Daniel watches them with warm eyes, and Regina doesn’t know how to apologize for this, exactly, except that she knows that he won’t want it. 

 

_ I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy _ , he says once when she stumbles through an attempt, and he hugs her and it feels like…a brother, maybe, or a good friend. She has a  _ friend  _ now, one who hasn’t ever been related to her or that she’s in love with, and that feels like another step toward happiness.

 

It’s nothing she’ll ever deserve, but she grasps onto it anyway, holds it with all the force that–

 

“Harder,” Emma gasps against the shower wall, and Regina pistons her fingers and moves them sharply up, up, into Emma until Emma is panting again. The water slides down their slippery bodies, feels smooth and energizing, and Emma kisses Regina’s neck, sucks hard at it as Regina keeps a steady rhythm inside of her. “Oh,  _ fuck,  _ that’s good,” Emma says, and she slumps suddenly, her inner walls tightening around Regina’s fingers as she comes. Regina slides her other hand between them, cupping a breast and flicking the nipple with her thumb, squeezing in just the way that Emma likes it.

 

Emma breathes harder, faster, and Regina starts pumping, feeling Emma’s walls still pulsing as she comes again and again, finally letting out a strangled scream that satisfies Regina. A moment later, Emma thrusts Regina back against the opposite wall of the shower, the spray erupting over them, and her hands are everywhere at once. She massages Regina’s breasts, tugs at Regina’s earlobe with her teeth and kisses a trail down her jawline to her chest. 

 

Regina leans back, breathless and needy, and Emma latches onto one breast, sucking purpled bruises as she palms the other roughly. Her hands move everywhere– Emma is as restless now as she is at any time, and she moves with rapidity, urgency, as though they don’t have all the time in the world in this shower. She settles on Regina’s ass, squeezes fleshy globes so hard that Regina lets out a moan and her hips surge forward, and then Emma is hoisting her up, backing her against the wall with Regina’s thighs wrapped around Emma’s hips. 

 

“I got you right where I want you,” Emma breathes into her ear, and Regina rolls her eyes and leans back, letting Emma kiss her hard. She’s trapped against Emma in the best of ways, skin against skin and breasts molding together and a warm heat in her belly, and she wraps her arms around Emma’s neck, held in place only by Emma’s body against her and the wall behind her.

 

Abruptly, the kissing stops. Emma is distracted, and Regina glances down, struggling to see what Emma is looking at. 

 

_ Of course _ . It’s the mark on Regina’s arm, the signature stark against her skin as water pours over it. Emma reaches up to touch it, an impish grin on her face, and she says, “Wanna see what I learned to do?” Regina can only nod, helpless with wanting, and Emma grins again and then touches the mark. 

 

It disappears at last, magic lifting it off of Regina’s arm as though it had never been there for months. It’s odd, seeing it go, bittersweet like a farewell to training wheels, or a splint.  _ Goodbye, I don’t need you anymore. Goodbye, I have the real thing now. _

 

Emma takes a breath, says, “Everything okay?” and Regina nods and lurches to her, kisses her with all she has.  _ Emma _ , hers at last, and it feels like an impossible, precious treasure to know it.  _ Happiness _ , and it’s still hard to believe that it could be, except when Emma is in her arms.

 

_ Love is weakness _ , Mother had said.  _ Love is strength _ , Emma had retorted.  _ Then love again, _ Daniel had told her in another lifetime, a too-brief existence he doesn’t remember anymore.

 

_ I found my real mom!  _ and her world had fallen apart, she had once been foolish enough to believe.  _ I found my real mom! _ and her world had been pieced together again, bit by bit, with an awkward smile and a  _ hi _ and Emma Swan on her doorstep, ready to change everything.

**Author's Note:**

> You can read a bit more about my writing [here](http://coalitiongirl.tumblr.com/coffee), as per usual. Thank you so much for reading! Please let me know what you think!


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